Sociology & Criminology

The nature and extent of crime; the factors related to criminal behavior; theories of the treatment and control of offenders; crime prevention programs.

This course presents an overview of the criminal justice system. It focuses on the nature, operation and critical issues of law enforcement, the courts and corrections.

Meaning and scope of delinquency; delinquency theories; role of social institutions and social agencies; prevention, control, and treatment programs.

Police are the gatekeepers of the criminal justice system - their decisions and actions can have enormous consequences for people's lives. But these decisions are not made mechanically by a simple application of criminal statutes. Rather police are empowered with discretion. The course will examine the police role in contemporary society, the nature of police discretion, and how discretion is exercised in the handling of individual cases.

This is a comprehensive introduction to the U.S. criminal court system. It provides an overview of the stages of the criminal process. It examines critical issues surrounding each stage and the roles of the prosecutor, defense attorney and judge.

The meaning, origin and impact of law viewed from several sociological perspectives; the law in action and the social context of legal professions.

This course examines the factors which influence the decision to charge a person with a crime, public policy considerations relating to restraints on law enforcement and the property and wisdom of some established rules of law. Supreme Court decisions affecting the criminal process will be discussed.

Survey of the historical and contemporary treatment of convicted offenders; analysis of the prison social system; analysis of the theory, practice and function of correctional programs.

Analyzes systemic problems in criminal legal system that give rise to wrongful convictions. Topics include false confessions, unreliable eyewitness identifications, law enforcement corruption/misconduct, informants, flawed coverage, and ineffective assistance of counsel.

White collar crimes are committed by professionals for the benefit of individuals or organizations. This course examines the nature and magnitude (cost in dollars and lives) of white collar crime. Sociological theories explaining the commission of """crime in the suites"""" and society's response will be discussed."

History of drug use and drug laws; relationship between drug use and crime; drug offenses and the criminal justice system; treatment and prevention issues.

Racial and ethnic disparities in crime and justice both reflect and contribute to social injustice. Theories and research provide insight about individual biases and structural racism that are evident in criminal justice practices, policies, and institutions.

This course investigates special topics or emerging issues within criminology. Topics are selected for their importance or the expertise of the instructor.

Evidenced-based analysis of strategies to prevent/reduce crime and delinquency. Topics include theory and evaluation research; strategies with schools, early childhood, parenting, peers and gangs, juvenile substance use; policies in juvenile, policing, corrections; and implementation science and social justice.

Overview of field of queer criminology, a subdiscipline of criminology that focuses on the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people within the criminal legal system (e.g.,) as victims, perpetrators, and subjects of state control), and on employing queer methodological approaches and perspectives.

Supervised research project which results in a major research paper.

The nature of criminological theory and the major theoretical developments that have shaped criminology.

Supervised work experience in a criminal justice agency.

This course focuses on a particular substantive area and integrates criminological theory and research methodology.

Introduction to the analysis of social behavior, emphasis on socialization, collective and group behavior.

Significant problems of American society; the sociocultural basis of social problems, the conditions facilitating their incidence, and approaches to therapeutic intervention.

A sociological examination of rule-breaking behavior; causal theories of deviance; types of deviance and their distribution in contemporary society.

Institutional organization of mate selection, courtship, and marriage relationships in American society; family relationships and functions; family disorganization and change.

History and development of social welfare; basic issues in social welfare planning and administration. The major methods of social work, practice; social casework, group work and community organization, in such areas as child welfare, family service and counseling, probation and corrections.

Internship

The meaning, origin, and impact of law viewed from several sociological perspectives; the law in action and the social context of legal professions.

This course explores the social dimensions of health, disease and illness, focusing especially on the social determinants of disease, the social experience of illness, and the role and meaning of medicine and public health in modern U.S. society. The class examines how we define health problems and their solutions, and it considers the ways in which factors such as race, gender and class, and social connections affect health.

Examination of mental health and illness in social and historical context; different frameworks for understanding mental illness (e.g. psychological, biomedical, and sociological); social meanings, definitions, and determinants of mental illness; approaches to treatment; and the various ways in which the mentally ill (and/or those labelled as mentally ill) have been marginalized in society.

Exploration of gender as a social construct shaped by social structures and cultural norms; focus on intersections of gender with other axes of inequality including race/ethnicity, social class, sexuality, and citizenship.

Development of race and ethnic relationships in America; the impact of power-conflict relations on race and ethnic patterns; particular attention given to development from early 1950's to present.

The nature of the city; history of urban settlement; urban form; institutions, organizational structures and processes; major problems of living in urban America.

The sociological study of social movements, including mobilization, participation, tactics, goals and ideology; the social contexts in which movements arise and develop; the nature and influence of historical and contemporary movements and activism.

Topics addressing special or emerging interests, chosen for their current importance and the specific expertise of an instructor.

Explores systems of inequality in US through lens of international migration. Examines how race/ethnicity, class, gender, age, and citizenship status shape experience of migrants and non-migrants. Organized around central debates such as incorporation, legal status, race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality, and transnationalism.

Sports as both a unifying and divisive social force. The corporatization and commodification of organized sports.

Theoretical framework challenging dominant understandings of race and law. Examines race, racism, systems of inequality through CRT lens; uses CRT as epistemological and empirically grounded theoretical frame; examines how norms of legal profession and areas of law facilitate racial oppression.

Influence of sociological ideas on social policies. Students will be expected to design a theoretically driven empirical study which impacts on some public policy.

The development of real-world research skills through the application of social scientific methods and statistics. Special emphasis is given to sampling, measurement, applied statistics, data management and evaluative research.

Supervised project or research culminating in research report or major paper.

Advanced course for seniors focusing on particular substantive area; topics rotate.